Ants!!! Ants!!! Ants!!!

Our block of flats is infested with Ants.

I got really worried the first time I noticed them. They were chowing down on some brown rice. But what is more worrying than seeing ants is that those slow release carbs will keep them going all day so I know they'll be back. This also happened to be the same day that I got a note from Mrs. Sign Guy saying "Do you have ants in your flat?" Now I'm not suggesting that she put them there - just that I am so clueless I didn't see them until I was looking for them.

And so it came to pass that quite a few people in the flats had these ants. The Management Company called an exterminator who would be available all day to come into each flat and put down the poison to "kill" them. So we all booked various times of the day off and arranged to meet him.

At 4:20, nearly two hours after I had arranged to meet him, there is a knock at the door. It is Mrs Sign Guy and (Introducing a new character!!!) "Her Upstairs". They step into my flat, which thankfully is clean and tidy due to the fact that the carpets were steam cleaned the day before. I throw a cursory glance at their shoes - to make sure they weren't going to dirty the carpet.
Big pink fluffy gorilla feet - acceptable
Slip on trainer type shoes - passable but probably a good job she slipped them off

We walk towards the kitchen. Her Upstairs looks into the bedroom, wanting to see where the magic happens.

"We've come to put the poison down." Mrs Sign Guy says, "The guy came at 9am and left instructions with Her Upstairs about what to do. So we've come to put the poison down. We're doing everyone’s flats - we've even been up to that guy who looks like a cross between Bill Odie and Jesus, y'know the one who is always looking out his window. Anyway, I'm not surprised he has Ants!"

"Apparently they like heat and protein." says Her Upstairs as she puts the poison by the cooker. I can see why they like my flat. Not only do I eat a high protein diet consisting of lots of fish, chicken and egg white omelettes but I also have the heating on all the time. I contemplate not killing the Ants for a moment since we seem to have lots in common. We could swap ideas for protein shakes and I can blame them for turning the heat up.

"Have you had much of a problem with the Ants?" asks Mrs Sign Guy. "We have. I opened one cupboard and saw 1000s of them and I've seen them on the toilet seat and I was the one that diagnosed them as being Pharaoh ants. Apparently, they spread Typhoid. I looked it up on the Internet!" she says proudly, like a young naive woman who still believes everything they read on the Internet is true and isn't a series of vaguely connected events, joined together, exploited and extrapolated for comic purposes.

"Great, give the girl a medal." I think, "She managed to use Google! Now go back to 1996 when that would have been impressive. I would have been more impressed if you'd said that you'd been to the library and looked it up in a book." Or at least I think I thought that. If I didn't think it and said it then I’ll have just pissed a neighbour off.

And more to the point it didn't take a genius to figure out that they were Pharaoh Ants. Firstly when you look at them closely they all "Walk like an Egyptian", secondly they had built a little pyramid in the corner and finally they were worshiping the Ra the Sun God.

I am stuck in a traffic jam twelve miles from Leeds!!!

I have borrowed my Dad's TomTom for the day as I need to find my way to a secret place for a secret meeting about secret things. The more I think about it the more I'm sure he only bought TomTom so that he'd have someone to talk to in the car. And more importantly it doesn't get bored of his stories or answer back:

"And then Great Uncle Peter moved to London, Ontario and lived above a shop on Dundas Street…."
"Turn left in 300 yards"

"Because he was the only Liberal on a hung Council of 9 Conservatives and 9 Labour, he didn’t have to buy a drink all year…"
"Turn around when possible!!!"

I am sitting in a traffic jam crawling towards Leeds. The traffic is not moving at all and I am already going to be a bit late. I make some mental calculations (Our North American readers should note this is the same as "doing the math" but it sounds better). TomTom says I have 45 minutes to go and I will arrive at 11:22, it is currently 8:12. So the clock is 2 hours and 25 minutes wrong and I will be getting there three minutes before the meeting starts. This is not very heartening.

After another five minutes of barely moving, I decide to switch lanes. If my life was a badly written sitcom the other lane of traffic would suddenly start moving until I switched back again. It doesn't. I curse my luck for not living in "My Family".

Neither lane moves for what seems an eternity. But when it does, we have 2 minutes of constant motion. I perform a computation to see if my situation has improved (same explanation as before). The situation has now got worse. TomTom is now calculating my arrival time a calendar rather than a clock.

"It's a good job we checked the kick off time isn't it? Otherwise we'd just be getting here." I say to my Canadian Girlfriend as we get on the tram home from FC United's match against Salford City. After such a hard fought victory against the only team to take points from FC this year, the tram is rocking.

Literally.

The 173rd chorus of "Sloop John B." rings out and the celebrations continue. People jump up and down causing the floor of the tram to shake. The fat guy behind me rams his elbow into the window causing it to shudder, shake and be on the verge of falling out.

"Argh, I'm going to have that bloody song as an earworm all week now." My Canadian Girlfriend says as she untangles her hair from the velcro on her coat's hood.

I am mightily impressed by the construction of the tram as it survives "The Twelve Days of Cantona" - the only damage being a light casing falling off its bracket, which was caused by the young kids stood on the seats at the front and banging their hands on the roof of the tram.

We round the corner from Exchange Quay to Pomona, just as the tram starts singing John Denver's "Take me home". I catch a glimpse of Old Trafford, resplendant in the watery winter sun. I start to get emotional and well up.

So far, I think I have dealt well with leaving Old Trafford after 20 years. The time was right to leave, I know that - Glazer, Ferdinand and Sky were constantly giving me reasons to walk away. The irreversable direction top flight football is taking was not one I wanted to go along. And withdrawing my money and support was the only thing I could do to protest against that.

But it's like having a fight with your sister. You know eventually you're gonna be friends again and all will be forgotten and you know that when the fight is over, you'll probably be closer than you've ever been before. You can't stay mad at them forever, even if you fill your time with 'other distractions'. And I want to be 'taken home'. I miss Manchester United.

I'm wandering. I tend to lose my focus when I'm writing and get emotional and upset.

Where was I going?

Oh yes. If anyone has a spare for Sunday's game against Chelsea can they let me know?

I wait for a Tram at the tram stop. I have found that this is the best place to wait for trams. It is not a good place to wait for a bus. Unless of course you're at Altrincham, or Bury, or any of the many tram stops which have bus stops attatched. Still even at those stops you'd be better waiting at the actual bus stop for the bus rather a tram stop and then trying to run to catch the bus. It is a good 20m from the Alty Tram stop to the 245 bus stop.

So don't do it, unless you wanted some exercise.

"Hello!" comes a southern sounding voice. I look over to see one of our company's temps who I was introduced to on the steps of the canteen a few days ago.

"Hello!" I reply, trying to make it look like I remembered her name. I do remember that I had my lilac shirt on and I treated myself to some apple pie when I did get into the canteen but when you're being prevented from getting a can of diet coke by someone introducing someone to you, who is only going to be around for a month anyway, remembering their name is the least of your concerns.

"Did you know?" she says, "That there's a guy who looks exactly like you who normally gets the tram about this time. I've seen him a couple of nights running. He's even got the same sort of coat as you. But he doesn't wear glasses."

"Does he look like this?" I say removing my glasses.

"Oh...." she says "Do you sometimes wear contacts?"

"Yes" I reply.

There is a period of akward silence. I contemplate using this as a permanent method of disguise but no one, bar Louis Lane, would ever fall for that.

"Oh Wow!!! A spice rack!" I say.
"Oh Wow!!! A spice rack!" I repeat.
"Oh Wow!!! A spice rack!" I finish.

"Try the 'Oh Wow!!!' from the second one and the 'A spice rack!' from the first." says my Canadian Girlfriend being helpful. We are on our way up to my Aunt and Uncle's to collect My Birthday Present. It is going to be a spice rack and I am practising acting surprised.

To make sure that they weren't buying me something that I already owned and it would be something I could use, wanted and had room for, they called my Father and asked him. He consulted my Mother. She consulted with my Little Sister, who in turn consulted with My Canadian Girlfriend. When faced with a question like that, she did the only honourable thing she could - She asked me.

Now my aunt and uncle have been known to give some very strange presents over the years. I received a dressing gown from them for consecutive Birthdays and whenever a member of the family is a student, they put together a "Student Survival Pack" - which contains non-perishable foods like soup and spam. So all in all, a spice rack isn't a bad present. Better the devil you know.

I unwrap the paper and steel myself. "Oh wow!!! A Spice Rack!" I say. I think I have, using my acting skills, convinced them that not only do I want and need a spice rack but also that I had no idea what it was going to be.

We head to the dinner table.
Gespatcheo - which tasted as bad as my attempt to spell it
Pork, Apricot and Rice - meh
Individual posh apple pies - nice

Now there are many things that Canadian Girlfriends are useful for: cooking you fried breakfasts, looking after you when you're sick, reminding you that you need milk, blow jobs etc. But they are really handy because they can deflect half the conversation from you during meals with relatives.

"The needlework on these chairs are amazing - did you do them?" she says to my Aunt, who did do them. "I've always been interested in this sort of thing. I've often considered taking up knitting as a hobby but I never get round to it. I always keep meaning to get one of those starter kits."

My Aunt and Uncle exchange knowing glances.

Rookie Mistake. After the candle making set my little sister got three years ago, we learnt you have to be very careful what you say at this time of year. When we get to the car I will get her to start practising....

"Oh Wow!!! A knitting kit!"

I bake.

I have all the ingredients an Urban chef needs: expensive Green and Black's Chocolate, a recipe - in American measurements - downloaded from the Internet and a Starbucks overall (Purchased from eBay).

I am making muffins.

I cream the butter and the sugar and melt the chocolate in a bain-marie. I prove to myself that by knowing the French term for something I am a good cook. I stir the chocolate. I like my chocolate like I like my coffee. And I like my coffee like I like my women. Ground up and in the freezer or strong, black, bitter and with a slight hint of orange.

In fact there isn't a chocolate that has been made that is too bitter for me. I am praying that the Hotel Chocolat Gods will eventually have some 100% chocolate so I can try some. It is normally a chef's perrogative to have a glass of red or white when cooking a stew but since I don't drink alcohol or make casseroles, eating cooking chocolate is the closest I get.

But this chocolate is dark. It is darker than a comedy written by Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker. And it's bitter. It is bitterer than Bertie Magoo, the bitter blue city fan, after realising that city last won a trophy 31 years ago, the year Elvis died.

I slave over the bowl, mixing thoroughly.I miss the bit in X-Men2 where Halle Berry goes all albino and Hugh Jackman takes his shirt off.

After taking legal advice, I decided to remove the poisoned muffin. This, I am told, would constitute manslaughter if I had an expensive lawyer and murder if I got a cheap lawyer.

Why am I baking? It is my Birthday on Saturday and I am fullfilling the time honoured British tradition of giving my co-workers high cholesterol as my Birthday present to them all. It is a 9 birthday this year so the next 12 months will be spent worrying, fretting and pulling what is left of my hair out as I approach a big 0 and the inevitable decline into older middle age. And, if reading Swallows and Amazons when I was 10 hadn't put me off books for life, I would have posted my Amazon Wishlist.

There are many stages to go through when you're running late for work.

• First is the fear - "Oh my God! That means I can't leave till 5 tonight" at which point you look :(


• And then comes denial - "If I run for that tram I'll only be a couple of minutes late."


• And then finally acceptance - "Screw it, if I'm five minutes late who cares? It's not like my work is important. I'm probably only going to spend the first hour blogging anyway. In that case, I may as well stop for a coffee."

So with that in mind, I walk into Starbucks holding a crisp ten pound note and join the two person queue just as some guy leaves the cash register. "You have forgotten your card!" says the cashier in a strange Anglo-German-American-Australian twang (Mental Note: I must go on a course for recognising accents - it turned out the 'Austrian' Trainer from the other week was from Isreal). "It's still authorising...."

We wait and the queue grows.

"Technology today, it's supposed to make life easier isn't it?" she says trying to make small talk. Her comments fall on deaf ears as he is too busy using his Blackberry. She takes my order.

We wait some more and the queue reaches the door.

The woman two behind me tuts loudly. Although, since she is wearing a knee length skirt, mid calf boots and just below the knee socks, which show a shocking two inches of lilly white knee / leg, she is no place to criticise anyone. However, since I am wearing my emergency back-of-the-wardrobe-goes-with-every-suit-I-own shirt I am probably manning the catapult next to her in the glass house. (I am wearing this shirt due to a) a toothpaste incident with the shirt I was supposed to wear and b) it was supposed to be laundry weekend last weekend)

"This doesn't seem to be working...." she says.

We wait some more.

Now I put down what happened next to either the fact that they've started using the Red Christmas cups and the spirit of the season came over me or the fact that my drink is getting cold on the end of the counter; "How much is it?" I say, "I've just been to the cash machine and I don't mind paying for it if it gets things moving."

"Well I can pay cash if that's easier" says the guy. There is a stunned silence as he gets a roll of about 20 ten pound notes out of his pocket and takes one off.

I finally get my drink; it's cold.

It's the coldest day of the year so far - I know this because I had to give a Brass Monkey directions to a welders - and my legs are aching from football. I wake up feeling lethargic.

And then my heater, today of all days, decides that instead of running a normal weekday program of putting the heating and hot water on at 05:45, it's going to pretend that it's Saturday.

This is double-y cruel because, not only was it very cold, but it rubbed my nose in it by reminding me, while standing shivering, that I have to go to work today.

If you know why it would do that then press the red button now but make sure you have the bill payers permission.